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Striking images show plastic litter in the world’s most remote coral reefs

Fishing nets, packaging and other debris threaten wildlife in some of the ocean’s deepest reef ecosystems.
  1. Katharine Sanderson
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A net entangled in a shallow reef and full of fishes.

Ghost fishing: this discarded net continues to catch fish in a reef off Brazil. Credit: Léo Francini

A survey of 84 coral ecosystems at 25 locations across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian ocean basins found plastic debris from human activities in almost all of them, both shallow and deep.

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Nature 619, 447 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02271-8

Read the related News & Views: ‘Large-scale collaborations uncover global extent of plastic pollution’

References

  1. Pinheiro, H. T. et al. Nature 619, 311–316 (2023).

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